Week 87

A scripture that I really liked this week was from Helaman 3. It goes like this:
"29 Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—
30 And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out."

I like the idea that anyone can choose to follow the example of our Savior and receive the associated blessings that go along with that; no matter what our current life circumstances are. I'm trying my best to be a "man of Christ" like it says in this scripture and I have faith that I can return to live with God again. I invite you all to lay hold upon the word of God this week and let it make you men and women of Christ. Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Mitchell

excerpts from an email to the family:

This week I got to interview two people for baptism (that being one of the responsibilities of the district leader - to interview baptismal candidates of those taught by people in his district). One was a 14 year old girl whose grandma is a member. The other was a 30ish year old man whose wife is a member. They both passed. The girl was baptized in the ocean in Miyako. The brother is supposed to get baptized tonight in the Morioka church. He was taught by the APs.

This week I went to Akita to get my new companion. His name is Elder Dickerson and he's from Heber Utah. He's the third of five children. He has two old sisters, one younger brother and the youngest is his little sister. He ran cross country in high school. His Japanese is pretty good. He's taller than I am. I'm kind of short. Umm.

I also went to Miyako for their baptismal interview and splits. It was kind of fun. We didn't have too much time in Morioka this week. And I'm supposed to go to Sendai this week too so that will mean some kind of short time in Morioka this week too.

I love you the most,
BEn

 Me and Elder Dickerson

Week 86

I'm in Akita because the other three Elders drove to Sendai. I'm hanging out with them for today and then bringing my new companion back to Morioka. We're at a Mexican restaurant right now. It's kind of an interesting place. I hope they bring me lots of food because I am very very hungry right now. I had to wake up a little hit before four this morning to catch the train here. So I had breakfast at about four thirty. And that was a long long time ago.

We got transfer calls last week. I'm staying in Morioka. My apartment has two Elders leaving. And then one more is leaving halfway through next transfer to get back in time for school. I'm not quite sure what's going to happen then but I'll be the only one left from last transfer in the apartment in a few weeks assuming that Elder Davies' leaving early doesn't affect me.

Elders Davies and Haskins have been very interested in arm wrestling lately. I beat them both.

My enchiladas are taking a long time.

The fourteen Elders in the apartment a while ago wasn't too bad. We had floor space for all of them. 16 would have been quite a bit harder.

I just got tacos!

I love you all the most,
Ben

Week 85

Sorry I don't really have any time to write at all. I did take some pictures from a hike we did this week though. We got an extra p-day yesterday so we decided to go hike Mount Iwate. It was pretty fun. The extra p-day was for getting close to our mission baptismal goal last transfer. We had the highest baptismal numbers for a single month that our mission has had in quite a long time (10).

The typhoon didn't really show up. I don't think we even had a light breeze.

This week at zone conference we talked about introducing the Book of Mormon. When we introduce the Book of Mormon we're supposed to make it sound really myterious. We make sure to mention things like the fact that Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ and that he was shown the place of an ancient record by an angel. He then translated that record by the power of God, which gives us the opportunity to learn first-hand what happens when people follow Jesus Christ.

I love you all!
Elder Mitchell

The view from Mount Iwate.

Week 84

We just finished up going fishing with Brother Shibata who got baptized last week. We got special permission to go to Miyako because apparently ocean fishing is better than other kinds. We unfortunately only got one fish. That's okay though. It was pretty fun.

This week Elder Richardson was bitten by a bug and almost couldn't fit his foot in his shoe because of how swollen it was. We had to go to the doctor and get some fancy medicine for it. Brother Shibata came and waited at the doctor with us. Then he bought us tonkatsu. He's great.

We recently started a thing that President Sekiguchi calls the "Siesta schedule". It's where we wake up at 5am but get to take a nap from 1:00 to 2:30 after lunch. That was actually started yesterday. So we've only done it once. I'm not a huge fan so far...

Our friend Tak is in the military and was a little bit worried about whether or not that was okay. We shared the Title of Liberty with him. For those who aren't familiar with it here is a quick excerpt from Alma 46, "And it came to pass that he rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it—In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children—and he fastened it upon the end of a pole. And he fastened on his head-plate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armor about his loins; and he took the pole, which had on the end thereof his rent coat, (and he called it the title of liberty) and he bowed himself to the earth, and he prayed mightily unto his God for the blessings of liberty to rest upon his brethren, so long as there should a band of Christians remain to possess the land". This basically says that fighting is justified in order to protect your country, your freedom, and your family.

We talked to a pretty cool dude this week. He started with an English "No thank you" and started closing the door. But we're pretty seasoned missionaries and do our best to share the gospel and teach by the Spirit so with some persuasion and long-suffering we had a decent conversation and answered his questions about the purpose of commandments and who God is. He had met with missionaries from other churches before but didn't know too much about how our church differs from other Christian churches. We got permission to come back and talk with him again. :)

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

 Most of my district.

Fishing with Brother Shibata.

Week 83

Mommy,

This picture was taken at a place called Iwayama. It's not too far from where we live. The baptism was really good. I kind of expected that the mission would post our pictures of it so I wasn't too worried about putting it on Facebook. I don't have good Wi-Fi right now so I can't send them. You can just know that it went well. :)

I feel like not too much happened this week besides the baptism. We had a lot that we had to teach him so we spent a long time meeting with him and teaching him all of it. The baptism did indeed go very well. I'm not sure exactly what kind of details you all want. I think there are some more pictures I can put on Facebook. Maybe that will happen tomorrow. As far as the baptismal service goes, we didn't do a whole lot. We had an opening hymn and prayer, I gave a short talk, Brother Shibata and I went in the river and got a little bit wet, then we had a closing song and prayer. He also gave a short testimony in sacrament meeting.

Today we tried to go fishing with a young part-member family. It wasn't great. I don't like sunshine. I know that this transfer is only five weeks but I don't know about other ones and I haven't heard about any release dates lately.

I love you the most,
BeN

 Mission Leadersup training on July 6, 2018

 Shibata San's baptism on July 29, 2018, in the Nakatsugawa river.

Week 82

Good morning!

Japan has been pretty hot lately. This week my companion almost died because of how hot it was. We were just out and about doing things that might be expected of Mormon missionaries trying to share the gospel in Japan, when I thought it might be a good idea to look my companion in the face. I'm not too familiar with medical terms, but he had some pretty advanced stages of "the temperature is so hot that I want to go back inside and sit in front of the air conditioner" syndrome. I think that's also known as heat exhaustion. Anyway, we went and got a couple liters of sports drinks and juice at the nearest convenience store and sat in the shade for a few minutes. I think he's fine now.

Our friend Shibata is planning on getting baptized this week! He's one of my favorite people. We met him for the first time three or four weeks ago, but we've met with him almost every day since then. He's so great and I'm so glad that he's choosing to follow the example of Jesus Christ by joining his church and being baptized! He's pretty funny too. This week he asked us "Are you guys not allowed to wear deodorant?". Then he gave us some deodorant. Apparently we smelled pretty bad. For the record, we are allowed to wear deodorant and we apply it daily. It's just kind of hard to smell good when our primary form of transportation is riding a bicycle through the blazing hot sun.

Sometimes we get other forms of transportation than bicycles. Like walking. Usually that's only when our bicycles are broken. Like right now. I don't remember if all of the bikes that I've broken have made it into these emails, but this is probably the fourth or fifth bike that I've broken. This is probably the worst one so far. In the past it's mostly just been broken axles and bent wheels. This time was the frame. Another thing worth mentioning is that I haven't actually crashed on any bikes. I'll just be riding along and my bike will fall apart. I think this was the fastest I had been going too when my bike decided to stop cooperating. We were borderline late for meeting up with some other missionaries so we were going a little bit faster than normal when we hit a small bump and I felt it pop. My first thought was that it was the axle because I've broken multiple axles and it felt pretty similar. Interestingly, this pop was followed by an unfriendly grinding noise and a bit more braking than I had called for. I later realized that my weight would have basically been resting on one side of the back brakes when it snapped. It was pretty fun, though not something that I would necessarily recommend to friends.

Another funny thing this week: We have an English student that wanted to teach us about some Japanese culture so we talked about the zodiac calendar. He wrote out all the animals and stuff on the board and then wrote at the top "Let's ask girls what their zodiac animal is!". The idea being that we can avoid directly asking their age but still figure it out pretty easily. It sounded like some pretty good life advice to me. :)

I love you all! Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

I also attached a pretty cool graphic that familysearch sent me. Families are great and I'm so grateful for my family and their faithfully emailing me every week. I love them so much.

Week 81

Hello Family,

This week happened. It also happened to be the end of the transfer. So I guess I'm now transfer 13. That's pretty old. Neither my companion or I transferred this time so I'm still with Elder Richardson in Morioka.

This week we had three days in a row of companion exchanges. One day in Miyako with those Elders, hopped on a 6:05am bus to make it back to Morioka for Zone Leader splits, and then the next day splits with the APs in our apartment. I was actually sick that day and spent most of it sleeping, but either way it was a crazy three days. I'm mostly better now. My throat is still kind of sore but that's it.

We met with our friend Shibata a few times this week. He's super great. When Elder Richardson taught him on splits I guess he told someone that the missionaries are his best friends. I was a little bit salty about that because I wasn't there and I felt like I had done the most with/for him but I'm mostly over it. :)

Tak is doing good too. He skimmed over the whole Book of Mormon for his day off rather than read what we asked him to. We had assigned him Alma 7 and 3 Nephi 11, two of the realest chapters in the whole book. I guess that's okay though. He asked about unforgivable sins, the sons of perdition, and the placement of the book of Ether. He's a funny guy. We asked him again to read 3 Nephi 11 and hope to get a baptismal date with him next time. We tried with him once before, but his interest in the Book of Mormon has increased a lot over the last week, so we hope that he's ready now.

I just got an email from Sister Lor. She dies this week. That's pretty weird. Elder Turk and I will be the only ones left from our MTC district.

I'm actually stranded at the church right now. We came for personal study because we wanted to watch a missionary broadcast from a couple years ago. But it started raining pretty hard after we got here. We're just emailing until the APs come in their car to rescue us.

Familysearch sent me a way cool email this week.

I love you the most,
Ben

 Elder Richardson and I with Shibata.

 Some Ramen

Family Search

Week 80

Hello world!

A couple weeks ago the church came out with a new PMG. Some of it is more interesting, Some is less (just kidding), but one thing that caught my eye was the fact that missionary daily planners are now only going to have five weeks in them. I haven't actually been using those because I have a tablet that's way better, but my thought was that maybe transfers are changing to five weeks now. Would there be any other reason for changing the planner to five weeks? I don't have any official evidence for this besides the fact that next transfer will be five weeks (learned that from a really old missionary who will be dying after that one) and that Elder Turk said they were five weeks in an email to me last week. And he's a pretty reliable source most of the time. I'm not quite sure how that will work out if it does change. After this transfer I was set to have 24 weeks left, but if it changes I would either have to go to 25 or to 20. I'm not sure if I would have a choice in that or not but it was fun to think about.

We found a new friend on our way to DTM this week. His name is Shibata. The Sisters were going to be a little bit late because they were stuck at the doctor's office (they're fine... I think) so we decided to stop him on the way. One of the first things he said was that he believes in God and Jesus Christ. We weren't able to talk a whole lot right there because we were on one of the biggest roads in Morioka, but we got his phone number and an appointment to meet again. We've had one lesson with him so far and he's also taken us out to eat Sushi. He is going to go clothes shopping with us today. He said he knows a really great place so that might be fun. Maybe. I don't want to say that there's a zero percent chance of it being fun because that might make me sound like a punk youth who doesn't appreciate people's willingness to do stuff with us. And that would be awkward. Even if I do despise shopping.

This week we had a pretty good lesson with Tak. I think every lesson with him gets better and better. The biggest problem with him right now is that he's been pretty dang busy with work lately. We actually aren't able to meet him again until next Monday unless he calls us back and asks us to come sooner. So that's a little sad. But we're planning on talking about the doctrine of Christ next time and assigned him to read Alma 7 and 3 Nephi 11 to prepare for it, so that should be pretty good. We asked him two times ago to pray before he reads the BoM and when we asked last time he was doing that too, so we're pretty pleased with him right now. :)

Love,
Elder Mitchell

Week 79

Today is district pday. This is like the third time we've tried to do it this transfer, but last week some district members couldn't come last minute and the week before that nobody had anything they really wanted to do. Today was supposed to be a heavy thunderstorm according to Facebook, but I guess Facebook doesn't know what it's talking about. It's been sunny all day. But since we had planned to be inside, we played ping pong and a couple card games in the church before heading to shabu shabu.

This week we found a young family and talked to mom and four young kids for a few minutes and got permission to come back. We went back a couple times hoping to have a bit more parental participation, but they either said they were busy or were at work both times. One of the highlights of the week was four year old Aki yelling back into the house from the front door in exasperated Japanese, "Mom! It's okay if you don't play video games right now!!" He's a cute kid. :)

We also met a Buddhist missionary who wanted to go out to eat with us. It was not too enjoyable. It sufficeth me to say that that guy (and the friend he brought with) was very confused. But we were able to bear some good testimony about the truthfulness and blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ so that was good. We can at least say we tried to help them.

And we had a great lesson with our friend Tak! He is super interested in the Book of Mormon and willingly reads everything we ask him to! We talked about the Plan of Salvation (also known as Plan of Happiness. It allows us to live with our families and with God eternally) and he understood it all way fast. He thinks that he doesn't have any faith, but he believes everything we've said so far, and committed to pray before he studies the Book of Mormon this week!! He's great. :)

I've been drinking five liters of orange juice per week in recent days. I tell people that I have an orange juice addiction. It might be true. I haven't tried quitting.

I had a disagreement with a bug the other day. I'm not quite sure what I did to offend it, and I didn't actually ever see the bug, but I know it came seeking revenge of some kind because it bit me last Thursday and my ankle is still slightly larger than normal. I sent a picture at the peak of swelling to my mission mom and she asked me to rate my pain on a scale from 1-10. I told her it didn't really hurt and she believed me so she said I didn't need to go to the doctor.

I love you all and I know that God loves you too!

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

 A whiteboard picture we happened upon at the church (Shimai = Sister)

 My ankle at the peak of swelling.

My Facebook weather forecast for this week.

Week 78

Hello World,

I apologize for the lack of updates lately. I don't really have any specific excuses besides the general business of a missionary and the amount of frisbee that has needed playing.

I am now in Morioka. I don't think that ever made it into any weekly updates. I had to leave Iwaki which was actually pretty sad since it had been my favorite area by quite a lot. Fortunately Morioka is pretty good too and it might end up being another one of my favorite areas if I'm not careful. We have a really good branch president who is really good about working with the missionaries and a really nice church building right next to a beautiful pond known as Takamatsu no Ike. We also have a curry place with all-you-can-eat naan within a three minute walk from our apartment. My companion was also a really fast runner in high school so he drags me out of the apartment to run with him sometimes. I'm a pretty happy missionary. :)

We've also seen some crazy miracles since I've been here so far. Last week six of our friends were able to come to church! We went out to eat with a group of five friends who all happen to work at or with Aeon which is a huge chain of malls in Japan and invited them all to come to church with us. We told them a little bit about what happens there, and how attending church has helped us and our families. Going to church has always been a good excuse for me to get out of doing homework on Sundays. :) I think that they all learned at least a little bit, and a couple of them told us they'd be back next Sunday!

One scripture that I came to love recently was Alma 4:19-20. My favorite line is this one: "...seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them". There are a lot of people in Japan (and in the rest of the world) who are way confused, and the only way to reclaim them will be to follow Alma's example of "bearing down in pure testimony against them". I'm doing my best to follow Alma's example and I invite you all to do the same!!

Being a missionary is sometimes very very difficult, but I've learned so much as a missionary and my love of the gospel has grown so much!

Love,
Elder Mitchell


My comp and I took some right outside our apartment because we're not allowed to take any inside the apartment and my mom wanted more pictures of me. :)

 My comp and I took some right outside our apartment because 

we're not allowed to take any inside the apartment and my mom 

wanted more pictures of me. :)

 Our five friends that came to church this week.

The Tokyo hat was our baton in a running relay we decided to do last week.

Hello Family,

This week was kind of crazy. I got to meet some friends of the Morioka missionaries made by my current comp and Elder Nathan who might have been the two biggest eaters in the mission last transfer. Elder Nathan has since returned to America. I think he's at BYU right now. But anyway, Elders Richardson and Nathan ran into some Aeon executives and became friends with them. Aeon is a chain of malls all across Japan. I've had an Aeon in almost every area I've been in. So we think that they're pretty well off. :) They really like taking the missionaries out to eat. And they came to church this last Sunday! The boss dude was the one that seemed to have the most interest but ended up bringing four friends with him. It was pretty crazy. We had six people at church including our one guy that comes regularly! :) It was a little bit difficult to figure out where to be and what to be doing because there were so many. The Sisters also brought another dude who got passed to us. So there were seven total. I think we all survived though.

We also had zone conference. President told us we need to have more baptisms. So we're going to work on that I guess.

I got a picture of a scooter that I would like to zoom around Provo on for Tanni. I told him last week I would get one and I did. I think it's pretty cool. :)

My companion went on a run earlier this week too. It was a little bit more of a crazy run than other ones that I've done recently. We went pretty dang fast. And we ran for 35 minutes. We probably went like 10 or 12 miles. Probably. :)

Something that I've come to appreciate about being in Japan: Elders on bikes are more often than not faster than cars on city roads. It's pretty cool.

We also made friends with a Buddhist missionary that we're planning to go out to eat with on Friday. He said "you're coming as two people?" And we said "yeah" and he was like "okay I'm going to bring a friend too". We think we might have intimidated him a little bit.

I love you all the most,
Ben

Week 77

Hello mommy,

I'm not going to have very much email time at all today. We just got out of the apartment and are waiting for haircuts. Then we're going to go grocery shopping. And we're supposed to go running with an investigator this afternoon and he's going to bring a frisbee or something for after I think.

This week was okay. Our investigator that has apparently been to church four or five times wasn't able to make it this week so that was a little sad. We did talk to some pretty cool people though. And we had some curry at a nearby Indian restaurant. The missionaries are regulars to that place. :)

We have zone conference next week.

I'm back from haircuts and most of groceries. Getting ready for a couple more groceries and running.

Today I love Poppy the most. I'm about to go run with an investigator. Hopefully I don't die. It's super hot today. Amy is a fantastic grad princess although not quite as fantastic as me.

I love you the most!
Ben

Week 76

Dear Family,

Morioka is a pretty cool area. There are lots of good restaurants from what I hear from the Elders here right now. It's also way big. Apparently it's comparable to Sendai except that Sendai is split into three different areas.

Some of you may (or may not) have heard that I am currently serving as the responsible adult for the 10 missionaries in the Morioka/Miyako district. Actually that's not quite the case. There are some pretty responsible people in this district. Two of them are APs and one is an STL. And one is Elder Anderson who happens to be my second father. Elder Free being my first. Anyway, I've been having lots of fun trying to figure out a few different problems that have come up and been expected to resolve. This district is very different from Iwaki. I hope that I will be able to leave a positive impact on this district. There are some fire missionaries, but there is also one missionary in particular that is struggling a bit more than might be considered ideal.

I ran this morning. It was fun. I love running. But I don't think my hip liked it at all. My hip is so high-maintenance. It thinks it can just chill at the top of my legs and not even be expected to run around Morioka 500 times. Unfortunately I'm thinking that I might have to postpone this battle a little bit until after my mission and figure it out then. Assuming that my silly hip doesn't kill me before January. That would be awkward.

There is a Sister in Iwaki that expects that I will pick her up from the airport when she comes to America. She's one of my favorite people. She might be older than my grandmother. Not that that says anything. I have very young grandparents. I just wanted to make sure that you all understood that it wasn't a plan of mine to steal young women from Japan and marry them in America. Or at least not yet. ;)

I haven't driven a car in a very long time. Hmmmmm. I also haven't been on a hot date in a long time. Or listened to twentyone pilots. The things I sacrifice for trying to share the gospel. One of my family members quoted the "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass" scripture in their email to me today. Maybe by my small (relatively. I'm not sure that giving up driving was a small sacrifice) and simple sacrifices then great things will be brought to pass.

I love you the most and I apologize for not writing a weekly this week. I am too tired.
BeN

I'm not sure if you've seen this picture before. Probably not. I think it was taken right after English class last pday. But the Sister with a tentative plan of visiting America is the third from the right on the front row. Her first name is Emiko which means "Smile Child". I think it's pretty appropriate.